Montezuma's Daughter eBook

All that night the city murmured like a swarm of wasps,
and next day at dawn, so far as the eye could reach,
the streets and market place were filled with tens
of thousands of armed warriors. They threw themselves
like a wave upon the walls of the palace of Axa, and
like a wave from a rock they were driven back again
by the fire of the guns. Thrice they attacked,
and thrice they were repulsed. Then Montezuma,
the woman king, appeared upon the walls, praying them
to desist because, forsooth, did they succeed, he
himself might perish. Even then they obeyed him,
so great was their reverence for his sacred royalty,
and for a while attacked the Spaniards no more.
But further than this they would not go. If Montezuma
forbade them to kill the Spaniards, at least they
determined to starve them out, and from that hour a
strait blockade was kept up against the palace.
Hundreds of the Aztec soldiers had been slain already,
but the loss was not all upon their side, for some
of the Spaniards and many of the Tlascalans had fallen
into their hands. As for these unlucky prisoners,
their end was swift, for they were taken at once to
the temples of the great teocalli, and sacrificed there
to the gods in the sight of their comrades.

Now it was that Cortes returned with many more men,
for he had conquered Narvaez, whose followers joined
the standard of Cortes, and with them others, one
of whom I had good reason to know. Cortes was
suffered to rejoin his comrades in the palace of Axa
without attack, I do not know why, and on the following
day Cuitlahua, Montezuma’s brother, king of
Palapan, was released by him that he might soothe the
people. But Cuitlahua was no coward. Once
safe outside his prison walls, he called the council
together, of whom the chief was Guatemoc.

There they resolved on war to the end, giving it out
that Montezuma had forfeited his kingdom by his cowardice,
and on that resolve they acted. Had it been taken
but two short months before, by this date no Spaniard
would have been left alive in Tenoctitlan. For
after Marina, the love of Cortes, whose subtle wit
brought about his triumph, it was Montezuma who was
the chief cause of his own fall, and of that of the
kingdom of Anahuac.

CHAPTER XX

OTOMIE’S COUNSEL

On the day after the return of Cortes to Mexico, before
the hour of dawn I was awakened from my uneasy slumbers
by the whistling cries of thousands of warriors and
the sound of atabals and drums.

Hurrying to my post of outlook on the little pyramid,
where Otomie joined me, I saw that the whole people
were gathered for war. So far as the eye could
reach, in square, market place, and street, they were
massed in thousands and tens of thousands. Some
were armed with slings, some with bows and arrows,
others with javelins tipped with copper, and the club
set with spikes of obsidian that is called maqua, and
yet others, citizens of the poorer sort, with stakes